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On June 15, 2022, my plane landed at the airport near Cancun in Mexico. I hadn’t seen this trip coming long in advance because quite unexpectedly I had a new job! However, I still had two weeks of vacation days to spend from my old job and of course I wanted to go somewhere abroad. Coincidentally, I had read up not long before about the possibility of seeing Whale Sharks in Mexico. June should be a great time for this. So I set seeing Whale Sharks as my main goal and in addition I would also go deeper into the jungle for a few days to try and score a new wild cat.
In addition to seeing them, it was of course also my goal to get some pictures of the Whale Sharks. Last year I had already conceived the plan to photograph whales underwater and bought a nice (and way too expensive!) underwater housing for my camera, but that trip was canceled due to corona. So the underwater housing had just been gathering dust under my bed and I was really looking forward to finally be able to do some serious work with it!
However, the weather really messed up my Whale Shark plans. My plan was to go on a tour the day after my arrival with the opportunity to freedive with the Whale Sharks, but that didn’t happen. Of course I didn’t feel like doing nothing for a whole day and fortunately I was able to book a few scuba dives with another organization quite easily. It had been years since I had done that, but it soon felt familiar again.
Our first dive took place at a special location. That was the underwater museum MUSA. This underwater museum was set up as an art project with simultaneously the very practical goal of restoring underwater nature through coral formation on the sculptures. Hundreds of sculptures have already been sunk into the water and many more are supposed to be added. The dive in this environment was absolutely impressive!
A Volkswagen Beetle is part of the collection!
A nice landscape was leading up to the statues!
With some hidden gems to be found!
I was very happy to meet this turtle!
Then we went to have a closer look at the statues.
After a tour through the statues there was another car waiting.
And some more statues with a hidden suprise!
A stingray!
After a dive in this special environment, our boat sailed a little further where we saw a beautiful coral reef up close with all kinds of colorful fish during our second dive. I fanatically keep track of which birds and which mammals I have seen in the world, but that’s it for me. I therefore register fish in the same way that many photographers also look at birds: just take a picture of all the stuff that looks nice on the photo and don’t be too busy wanting to see different species. That’s actually quite nice too for a change!
Barracuda’s are always impressive!
This certainly made for a nice first day and in the end I got the Whale Shark too!
